Fragments
In Development
SHORT SYNOPSIS
When a mysterious sphere grants her the power to rewind time, bodyguard Melissa must stop a man who has fractured into
multiple versions of himself—
Each willing to kill for the object’s power.
But as her ability destroys her mind and body, saving the present may require traveling sixty years into the past.
LONG SYNOPSIS
Jacob, a weary war correspondent in his late forties, receives an unexpected voicemail from a stranger. The caller explains she intercepted a radio transmission from a woman named Melissa, who urgently requested that Jacob retrieve an item from her home safe and bring it to a remote set of coordinates. Their tone implies deep familiarity and emotional weight—though Jacob appears anxious and hesitant, he follows the message. From the safe, he takes a heavy sealed metal box, leaving behind a photograph of himself and Melissa during happier days.
Driving deep into a pine forest, Jacob’s car begins to malfunction before dying completely. His phone also loses signal and power. With no way to call for help, he walks on foot until he finds a modernist lake house beside a still lake—Melissa’s family property. Inside, he finally sees Melissa through a window, collapsed and bloody. But when she regains consciousness, she does not know who he is. She denies ever contacting him, denies remembering their marriage, and reacts to him as a stranger. Jacob is devastated and confused, but refuses to leave.
The film now shifts five days earlier, to Melissa’s arrival at the lake house with her two acquaintances: Catherine, an academic obsessively researching her grandfather’s fringe scientific theories about magnetic anomalies; and Florian, a wealthy lab investor funding Catherine’s work. The trio plan to investigate the site of a long-rumoured cosmic or electromagnetic disturbance—something Catherine believes occurs in cyclical bursts over the region.
Their early interactions reveal tensions: Florian feels manipulated financially and emotionally by Catherine; Melissa, estranged from her husband Jacob, carries regret and internal conflict; Catherine fears that she is on the edge of discovery or delusion. Over drinks, the three discuss time, regret, and the desire to undo past mistakes—each revealing something they wish they could change.
In the basement, they discover evidence of unfinished research, shielding metals, and notes describing a sphere-like object that can influence perception and time. That night, the lights fail and the trio become separated in the woods. A shockwave tears overhead. Melissa and Florian find Catherine in a clearing, clutching a black obsidian-like sphere that pulses with strange energy. The sphere overwhelms Catherine’s mind and strength, and Florian battles her for control. When Melissa intervenes, all three touch the sphere at once. Reality fractures. Melissa experiences her first time-slip—a sudden rewind of moments, disorientation, and a violent physical backlash.
This event fractures the three not only psychologically but existentially. Catherine and Florian begin to unravel—confusion, paranoia, mania, and identity failure. They appear to lose time, memory, and sometimes even their physical continuity. Florian becomes obsessed with the newfound power, convinced the sphere has granted him the ability to multiply himself. Catherine’s consciousness regresses through her past—reliving traumas, relationships, and fragmented emotional states. Melissa alone fights to maintain clarity, though the time-slips begin tearing her body and mind apart.
Conflict escalates violently. Catherine is killed—then Melissa slips back in time to moments before the fight, trying desperately to prevent it, but each attempt only worsens the outcome. Florian fractures further and splits into multiple versions of himself—some violent, some coherent, some dead. Melissa, realizing the sphere’s effects accumulate exponentially, makes a final catastrophic slip—traveling five days into the past, alone and gravely injured.
This is where the film’s structure loops back: Melissa, in her earlier timeline, struggles back to the lake house, wounded and traumatized. She uses Catherine’s grandfather’s radio to send the message Jacob eventually receives. She prepares the house for what she knows is coming: the crash, the madness, the breakdown of identity.
But when Jacob finally arrives in the present timeline, Melissa no longer remembers him. Her mind has fragmented between self-states across time. The emotional tragedy is not only that Jacob has come to save her—but that the version of Melissa who loved him is gone.
As Jacob tries to help her, another Catherine—damaged by the uncontrolled time-slips—stumbles back to the house. She is delirious, wounded, and destructive. The house becomes a final battleground between memory, identity, love, and the forces that have splintered them all.
The film closes with Jacob and Melissa fighting for survival in a collapsing reality shaped by desire, regret, and the irreversible consequences of trying to undo the past.
FRAGMENTS is a psychological sci-fi thriller about the cost of wanting to change what has already happened—an intimate story of love, memory, and the human desire to erase our greatest mistakes. It is Rashomon meets Arrival meets Annihilation, told through emotional realism and cosmic horror.
